Dell Inspiron Laptops - any good these days?

macs

macs

Suspended / Banned
Messages
794
Name
Rich
Edit My Images
Yes
We're in need of a new laptop as our current one is pretty much dead and my wife goes back to work in the new year and does a lot of work at home in the evenings (primary school teacher) so a new laptop is on the cards but we need to keep the costs down as much as possible as we have 2 small kids too.

We have mobiles and an iPad so the laptop only really gets used for Word, Excel and Photoshop Elements these days so I'm thinking spec along the lines of Intel i3, 4gb ram and 500gb HDD, 15.6" screen all of that as a minimum - anything more would be great.

Looking around the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 series has that at £299: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-3542-laptop/pd?oc=cn54225&model_id=inspiron-15-3542-laptop

Alternatives at this price include some refurbished ones (still with 12 months warranty like the Dell) like this with an i5 processor: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Pavili...t=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item23440c32f6

or this with an i3 but 8gb ram and 1tb HDD: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Pavili...472&rk=2&rkt=6&mehot=pp&sd=151465505526&rt=nc

or this is a 17" screen and the same spec (i3, 500gb, 4gb ram): http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-17-5748-laptop/pd?oc=cn74818&model_id=inspiron-17-5748-laptop


I guess I have two questions about laptops at this price point:
  1. Are the Dell ones any good?
  2. If you were to increase our desired spec would you have a higher spec processor or more RAM/HD or larger screen?
 
you'll very much get what you pay for at that price point (i.e. not much).

i3 arent very pokey, 4gb is the bare minimum for editing. photoshop will use both cpu and memory, i guess if you had to choose one or the other then memory may help with less scratching to the hard drive.

keep your eyes peeled on the Dell outlet for any bargains but there isnt much on there at the moment for your price range.
 
as mentioned above dell outlet, the update daily and i got my xps on there for £420 when it should have been £1300.

look at minimum i5 with 6gb ram and you cant go far wrong. they are great machines and dell support is second to none

this is the page to check on, they normally update every day around 2-2:30pm
you have to get in quick though as they get snapped up almost straight away and then appear on ebay at double the price half hour later.
be patient though look for the best spec you can afford even if it means waiting a few days for one to crop up.
http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=7&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh
 
neil_g said:
you'll very much get what you pay for at that price point (i.e. not much).

i3 arent very pokey, 4gb is the bare minimum for editing. photoshop will use both cpu and memory, i guess if you had to choose one or the other then memory may help with less scratching to the hard drive.

keep your eyes peeled on the Dell outlet for any bargains but there isnt much on there at the moment for your price range.
Click to expand...

According to the Adobe website PSE 11 requires
Minimum system requirements
  • 1 GB of RAM (2 GB for HD Video functions)
  • 4 GB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation)
Windows®
  • 1.6GHz or faster processor
and as i wont be doing any HD video processing surely 4gb RAM will be plenty.
we use i3 processors in the computers at work and they run AutoCAD 2013 without any issues so i'd have thought they would be ok for my usage at home too.

Thanks for the tip about the Dell Outlet - i'll keep my eyes peeled.
 
That looks a reasonable spec apart from the screen, but if you have any kind of external monitor at home it would likely be better. You could also add a second 8GB RAM stick to give dual channel speeds and 'future proof' a little.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top